


Small Fires

by tanaleth



Series: The Persistence Question [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst and Feels, Battle Couple, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers, Porn with Feelings, Post-Blind Betrayal, Sexual Inexperience, soft smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:01:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23514325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanaleth/pseuds/tanaleth
Summary: Cecily crouched over her duffel bag, the tightness in her chest making her fingers fumble with the buckles.Shelovedhim.How the hell had that happened?(Post-Blind Betrayal campfire smut/feels.)
Relationships: Paladin Danse/Female Sole Survivor
Series: The Persistence Question [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1702624
Comments: 33
Kudos: 110





	1. Chapter 1

Her companion was watching her through half-shut eyes, fatigue evident in every line of his body. The remains of an unappetizing dinner littered the ground and his undershirt was dampened with sweat and Cecily wondered, again, how he could be anything other than human.

She shoved aside the unsettling thought that her own DNA—that Nate's DNA, that Shaun's...

There was too much to process and it was all coming too fast. Cecily looked away from the man before her, away from the glow of the trash can bonfire, and stared into the too-dark night. She couldn't think about it all at once even if she wanted to. Her mind was at its limit.

"All right, soldier?"

That brought her down to earth. She snorted and turned to Danse. "Soldier? Really?"

"I—"

He swallowed and Cecily regretted her response. She hadn't meant it that way. She didn't want to make him uncomfortable or remind him of what he'd lost. Let alone the fact that she outranked him now. _Christ._

She tried not to notice the sight of his Adam's apple bobbing. Tried not to notice the way the firelight flickered over the planes of his arms or the shadow at the hollow of his throat, the dark curls on his chest that the thin stained fabric did little to conceal. 

She swallowed, too, conscious of every part of her body in a way she hadn't been once in the numbness of the last months. Even that night with the singer, her one evening of reckless disregard for everything she was and had been, had barely penetrated the chill fog. The fog had followed her from the Vault and only... only recently had it started to lift.

"Cecily," she told him. 

"Cecily," he repeated, a little quietly. A little more hesitantly than anything she was accustomed to hearing from his mouth. He'd always seemed so sure of himself before that afternoon.

She'd told him that she cared, and it was true. She'd told him that she wanted more than friendship. That was true, too. 

And he'd stared at her agog. As if she'd spoken another language: dipped into her college Latin and told him _you-accusative love-first person indicative_. Told it to those wide, uncomprehending brown eyes, lit with a desperate hope for someone to tell him he was wrong–that he was worthy. 

Maybe that was the answer to what kept him real. Not just the skin, not the way he moved or breathed, but the rest of it. He had a human's flaws and a human's confidence and a human's insecurities, even if the mind that generated them was only electrical impulses. 

Wasn't that how everyone's brain worked, when you got down to it? Cecily vaguely recalled studying the subject her freshman year at college. She'd sat by the window of her dorm room. Snow that didn't fall in the Commonwealth anymore drifted down outside while she worked at her shiny new terminal. She'd carefully copied the diagrams from the lecturer's slides, the dendrites and axons and she'd thought, _We're computers. We're all just computers, aren't we?_

Too bad she'd never dipped her toe into bioethics. Too busy with biathlon—though she'd had ample reason to be grateful for _those_ skills lately, too. At least the rifle skills. 

It wasn't so different, whatever the Brotherhood said. It didn't matter whether your neurons were organic or synthetic. She'd never have said Nick Valentine wasn't a person, but it was easy to remember his nature when she could see the blinking and whirring every time he spoke. Looking at Danse? The only thing that made her think he'd been grown in a lab was the degree to which he was painfully, aggressively attractive to her. And the way he stared at her, with sadness tempered by adoration that made her breath come short. 

She'd come back to the listening post just after noon. The rumble of vertibird engines had hardly faded into the distance before Danse was pouring his heart out with all the grief and despair he'd kept hidden beneath that calm determination. He'd told her he was nothing. And that was still better than the sad smile he'd worn before, the one that had—again, for the first time since the vault—made her truly afraid.

It wasn't the primal animal fear that kicked her into action when a feral sprang snarling from a catacomb, and it wasn't the uneasiness she felt when yet another person tried to convince her to take charge and lead yet another group of scrappy stragglers. It wasn't even the phantom fear of the early nights when she'd tossed and turned and thought every squeaking bedspring an infant's cry. It was a physical panic, the same strangling helplessness she'd felt pounding an inch-thick panel of tempered glass while the world grew dark at the edges. 

She _loved_ him. 

How the hell had that happened? 

Cecily crouched over her duffel bag, the tightness in her chest making her fingers fumble with the buckles. It wasn't just a crush. Well, it was a crush, but she knew herself better than to think that was all. It didn't even feel disloyal to Nate. It seemed... natural. If she felt guilty for anything, it was her own lack of guilt.

She exhaled sharply and tugged at the contents of the pack. 

"Steady," said Danse more alertly, sitting up straight and leaning forward to help her unroll the sleeping bag. "Don't set it on fire." 

"It's a synthetic," she muttered. "It'll just melt." 

"Polymers release toxins when heated. You shouldn't be breathing that." 

No, she shouldn't. Cecily was already too short of breath as his arm moved past her to tug the duffel bag away from the fire. She could feel the heat radiating off his body and her cheeks began to burn.

Apparently _she_ wasn't a synthetic.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Cecily had thought the night couldn't get any darker, but it did. The thin clouds cleared and their faint glow faded only to be replaced by a panoply of stars. She was five miles from downtown Boston and she could see the Milky Way. 

There was, strangely, some comfort in that. 

She knelt on her crumpled sleeping bag, folded back the top and smoothed out the corners with a stricter attention to detail than was really necessary. Their camp was on the bare ground a few yards back from the shoulder of the road, and open to the air—they often didn't bother with the tent, not on clear nights. Danse said it left you with a false sense of security.

Danse was also the one on watch more often than not. He'd admitted to her that he’d struggled with insomnia for years. Before all this, Cecily had thought she understood the reasons for it. Now she was less certain.

She sat back on her haunches and rubbed her eyes. She really shouldn’t sleep in her filthy jeans, but with him standing just over there gazing fiercely into the fire...

It wasn't modesty that stayed her hand. Cecily wasn’t much concerned with that to begin with; she'd had a child, for God’s sake. And it wasn’t distrust. He was her friend—her best friend—and they'd traveled together for months. Even once she'd started to realize the strength and nature of her feelings, she'd never thought twice about undressing in his company.

For his part, Danse had always been strictly professional. He'd just avert his eyes, never showing so much as a flicker of awareness as he continued droning on about mission parameters or weather forecasts or something else just as tedious as it was important. She'd eyed him with slightly less-than-professional curiosity on the rare occasions he’d taken off his hood or stepped out of the power armor frame, but he'd never shown any discomfort around her either. 

Now things had changed. All the awkwardness they'd breezily avoided so far had caught up with them. 

They'd never even kissed. Barely so much as touched without a bulwark of steel between them. But when she looked at him now, her lips tingled and her body tensed. And when she remembered the things they'd said to each other just a few hours ago… God, had they really said those things?

The rather fixed expression on Danse’s face as he stood with his arms crossed, staring at the fire, suggested that they had.

Cecily looked down and plucked at the frayed cuff of her jeans. In her peripheral vision, she saw him break his focus and turn her way. So she took a deep breath. 

"You know," she said, "the blue in these is artificial." She gestured at her jeans. "One of the first synthetic colors. A long time ago, about"—she glanced up at him and smiled in spite of herself—"about as long ago for me as my life seems to you, they found a way to create the dye in a lab." 

Danse cocked his head, waiting for her to get to the point. 

"It's the same molecule that makes the blue," she explained haltingly. "It's not better, or worse. Not even an imitation of the real thing. It _is_ the real thing. It just comes from a different place." 

His brows lowered. "I see what you're saying, and it's... good of you, but it's not the same.”

“I was there at the Institute. I saw them assembling new synths. The bone, the muscle. It looked real to me.” 

“Did they substitute everything? A human being’s more than a single molecule. What corners did they cut? How long will I even live?" He grimaced and ran a hand through his thick black hair. “It seemed so clear when I was talking to Arthur. But what if I am programmed to hurt people? Or...”

"No. I’ve thought about it." She'd spent more than a little time thinking about it, in fact. "It’s technically possible, but it doesn’t fit what we know.” 

Danse didn’t seem to hear her. "I believe in the Brotherhood's teachings. But was that my decision, or someone else’s?” He stepped back and held out his hands helplessly. “I think it was mine, but I don't know! Do I think I'm some sort of exception who’s better than—better than other—" 

He was pacing back and forth, agitated again. Cecily patted the spot next to her on the sleeping bag. She was relieved when Danse stepped over and lowered his large frame to sit at her side.

“You wanted to survive," she said. It was a struggle not to reach for his hand, but she folded hers tightly in her lap. "You know you did. You feel things—you know you do." 

“Yes, I feel things. Emotions. I realize that.” He exhaled dully. “I just don't know if they're the same emotions _you_ feel.”

“Nobody can really understand what's in someone else’s head. Human or not. But..." She hesitated, watching him. He was human in every way that mattered. "At least some of them are the same, I think. If you meant what you said earlier." 

To her astonishment, his lips curved upwards. She couldn't remember if she'd ever seen him smile before. "If there's one thing I do know about myself, it's that I don't say things I don't mean." 

She grinned back at him. "No." He'd always been honest. Almost everything he said radiated sincerity to the point of naivete—but he wasn’t a fool, he was intelligent and judicious. He simply believed it all. 

Or he _had_. 

"I'm..." Danse stared at her, then dropped his head. "I'm struggling, I admit. It all feels like a bad dream, but with you..." His eyes flicked back to hers. "If this part is real... then I don't want to wake up." 

Cecily raised herself to her knees and laid a tentative hand on his shoulder. She almost jumped when he reached up to clasp her wrist and hold it tightly. His palm was warm and a bit sweaty, his strong fingers dug into her skin and pressed against the bones and tendons, but after a moment his grasp loosened and he let his arm fall. 

"Danse," she whispered. She was still upright on her knees, looking down at him, and his eyes widened as she inched closer and moved one knee to the far side of his outstretched legs, straddling his lap. He leaned back a little to leave a polite amount of room between them, propping himself on his elbows, and she saw his hands curl reflexively. 

"Yes?" His voice was a little strangled. 

"You don't have a serial number stamped on your foot, do you?" 

He scowled, but she was relieved to see the tension in his jaw relax. "Not that I'm aware of."

"Hmm. Anywhere else?" 

"I... don't know. It doesn't seem likely, if Institute synths are designed for infiltration."

"Would you like me to check?" 

"Cecily, I don't..." He swallowed, but his blinking was erratic and the distance between their bodies was narrowing of its own accord. She could feel his breath on her face as he spoke. "I don't know what you want."

"I want to touch you," she said, throwing caution to the wind. "I want you to touch me."

"I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not any good at—at this sort of thing." His skin was flushed in the firelight and his eyes were darkened as they flicked over her face. "It's hard to believe you mean it." 

Dogmeat shattered the quiet with a sharp bark. Cecily swore and sat back; Danse let out a _"Damn,"_ as he leapt to his feet, all uncertainty forgotten.

The bark was succeeded by a low growl.

There was no time to fuss with armor. Danse went for the guns, Cecily fumbled with the dial of her Pip-Boy, and it still seemed like an eternity before a soft glow illuminated the road ahead. 

It took her eyes a moment longer to focus. The dark figure was waddling across the road at a leisurely pace. It was smaller than Dogmeat. But once Cecily's disbelieving mind caught up with her eyes, she lunged to grab the dog's harness. 

"What the hell is that?" snapped her other companion.

It had the sound of a rhetorical question. As it happened, Cecily knew the answer. 

"It's a porcupine," she said. 

Danse hoisted his rifle and took aim. "Aren't those the things that shoot their quills?" 

"No, of course not. That's just a—" 

The animal turned towards them. It didn't seem alarmed by the sound of raised voices, but its eyes flickered.. red. And then it arched its back and hissed as a shower of quills hit the cracked pavement. 

"—myth," Cecily muttered just before an energy beam reduced the creature to a smoldering pile of ash. Danse dropped the rifle off his shoulder more carelessly than was his wont and collapsed back onto the hard ground.

Dogmeat let out a disappointed whimper.

—

While Cecily walked the perimeter of the camp with the Pip-Boy, Danse examined the remains. 

"Porcupines don't travel in packs, do they?" he asked. 

"The ones before the War didn't," Cecily corrected him. "God only knows what _those_ monsters do. But"—she flicked off the flashlight—"I don't think there's anything else nearby."

They settled back onto the sleeping bag in the dimmer flicker of the firelight. Danse wasn't looking at her. She was excruciatingly aware of his closeness but half-afraid to breathe, to startle—

He reached for her abruptly and she nearly gasped in relief. It turned to a gasp of another kind when an arm curled around her shoulders and hauled her closer to him, half onto his lap. 

"Danse?" she breathed.

He didn't answer, but his eyes were focused; his hand was slipping up the back of her head, pulling her face close, and then he bent his neck and kissed her.

A wave of feelings swept over her, relief and excitement and unexpected joy. None of this was what she'd thought her life would be, but just then, she had no regrets.

Or... mostly no regrets. She couldn't ignore it all.

She couldn't stop the thought that Shaun—her son, her baby boy—might never have seen that beautiful sky. Or that Nate never would. Just like everyone else she'd ever known, ever loved, who was long dead or worse. 

She couldn't stop the thought that Danse might never have questioned his convictions if the matter hadn't been forced on him. 

And then she couldn't stop the thought that if she hadn't found him—if she hadn't said just the right thing at just the right time—

He was everything she wanted, but she pulled away from his lips. 

"I'm so afraid of losing you," she blurted. It wasn't quite what she'd meant to say. 

He caught her face in his hands. Large and warm and most importantly _his_ , and she squeezed her eyes shut to stop the stinging. He was perfect. Too perfect.

"You are?" he asked incredulously. "Look at me. Cecily, we're alive. We're together." 

He was right.

Maybe they didn't have to answer every question tonight.

She gave up trying to keep her thoughts straight. Instead she slid into his lap, coiling her arms around him as his caught her back in a vise grip. His hair was thick and springy between her fingers; his beard was softer than it had any right to be as he buried his face in the crook of her neck.

“I don’t even know what to do with you,” he mumbled against her skin. “I don’t know how to act.”

"I know it's going to take some… adjustment," she said, caressing his back, memorizing the planes and hollows. "But we don't need a contract. We can just do what feels right."

Cecily wasn't very good at that, herself. Rules, structure, laws. Without their framework, how did you know what was right? But this world fought rigidity at every turn. It demanded spontaneity; it defied anyone who failed to adapt. Mocked them with wild shrieking chaos and—and fucking mutant porcupines. 

Danse’s chest expanded with a deep inhale and Cecily's traitorous mouth went dry. She wasn't sure what she'd expected his body to look like under the omnipresent power armor—although she'd wondered, more often than was comfortable—but she hadn't imagined _this_. 

She shoved the thought from her mind that someone had designed him that way. Whatever his origins, he was more than someone's creation. The Institute, the Wasteland, boot camp, all and none of those things had made him. He was a person—he was her Danse, with all his confidence and confusion and stubborn contradictions. 

And he was, in the strictest and shallowest sense, absolutely perfect.

One of his legs slipped between her own and she clenched her thighs around his, ground against him unsubtly enough that he broke away from her lips with a gasp.

"I told you," she said hoarsely, "I want you to touch me." 

He didn't have much experience—or any, she mentally amended as his hands moved awkwardly over her—but she had every intention of changing that. 

"Do you want to?" she prodded, and he looked up in surprise.

"Affirmative."

Cecily laughed in delight. "We're not on a radio, Danse. You can just say 'yes'." 

"Then… yes," he said seriously. “I do want to.”

She kissed him, then, and he responded with eagerness. His arms held her in place against the solid wall of warmth that was his body; she caught his lower lip between her teeth. And then he said, “I love you." 

Cecily pulled back and blinked at him. She’d known it, but—

"I've never said that to anyone else," he added in a lower voice. "I never… I didn't think I needed… I know you were married before. I know it’s not the same.” 

"I'm only thinking about you." She freed a hand to stroke his cheek. His eyelids fell. "There's no one else here. Just you and me.”

"That's all I need," said Danse on a relieved breath.

He tightened his grip. The night was a warm one, but she shivered as he slid his hands under the ratty t-shirt and stroked her back, traced firm fingertips up her spine. Edged under the ancient elastic of her sports bra. There was just enough light that she could see his eyes widen as she raised her arms to pull it all off, let her breasts spill into his palms. 

Cecily felt lightheaded. She shifted back away from his lap and lowered herself to the ground, lay back on the sleeping bag and let him explore her body at his own pace. 

He was thorough. Meticulous. Determined to map every square inch of the terrain before devising a strategy. Cecily was torn between impatience and arousal as his lips moved carefully over each rib in turn; she ran her hands through his hair and let her eyes fall shut.

It felt _good._ When was the last time she'd let herself feel this good? 

When his mouth closed over her left nipple, she couldn't remember. 

Danse wasn't oblivious. He noticed her reaction, her body tensing and her hips rising off the ground, and used his teeth to stimulate her further.

"Good," she panted. "Good boy—"

He cupped both her breasts and when his thumbs brushed over her skin, she thought she could come from that gentle touch alone. The throbbing between her legs was almost painful. 

"I need you," she gasped, finally reaching for the button of her jeans and tugging them down. Danse let out a sharp breath but helped her pull them off and she was naked in his arms, their mouths were pressed together, tongues sliding—he was still fully dressed but he was hard against her thigh. His breathing was rapid and ragged. 

Cecily freed her hands long enough to give the hem of his shirt a tug. Obediently he lifted his arms, pulled off the shirt, then rose to his feet to kick off his pants. She raised herself back to her knees, admiring the sight. He stood with both feet planted squarely on the ground but he made a choked noise when her fingertips reached his cock and circled it lightly; his hips bucked to push harder against her palm. 

But she had other ideas. Danse's ragged breaths turned to groans as she lowered her head and closed her lips around him too, and she felt a burst of foolish pride. She curved the other hand around, slid up the back of a muscular thigh to grab that truly magnificent ass. He leaned forward with a gasp, his hands closing heavily over her shoulders, and he was trembling with excitement—

She should just fuck him already. 

If there was one advantage to this synth situation, it was that they wouldn't need to worry about contraception. Which was good, she said firmly to the faint voice of disappointment somewhere in the back of her mind. Cecily wasn't ready to think about that again yet. If ever. 

She released him from her mouth and he shuddered; she gave his cock a quick stroke and moved to lie back down. He gazed down at her and she caught a glimpse of his face. The expression on it made her throat tighten again.

"Lie down here with me," she whispered. "Come on, Danse." 

He lowered himself slowly, propping himself on his arms above her, but she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him down against her chest. 

"I don't want to hurt you," he said anxiously and she couldn't help a snort of laughter. 

"Oh, please.”

Danse didn’t seem to mind her amusement. The man was concentrating. The length of his body pressed against hers, the weight and breadth and warmth of him, was glorious. And he was defter than she expected; she spread her legs and reached to guide him but he was already there, nudging at her entrance; his fingers flicking over her—yes, he was a quick study. 

And—what mattered more—he cared. He wanted to make her happy.

She felt the same way about him. 

"Yes," she instructed breathlessly. "Go ahead, if you want." 

"This is what you want?"

_"Yes."_

He slid into her slowly. It was a little awkward and his body lacked the confident ease she knew from fighting at his side but it was perfect, too, the pressure and the heat and that beautiful night sky above. She lifted her chin and Danse paused in his thrusts to kiss her eagerly, but when she rocked her hips impatiently he got the hint. After that they kissed and moved together until panting tore their lips apart. 

She was on the verge of orgasm when he croaked, "Cecily, I’m—" 

"Yes, good," she whispered foolishly. "That's good," and her hips loosened while he pumped inside her. She slipped a hand between their bodies to finish herself off just as his grasp slackened and he all but collapsed on top of her. 

More than content, she hummed and laid a hand on the back of his sweaty neck. 

"This is all more… damp than I expected," he said thoughtfully. 

Cecily stifled a laugh. "That's a good thing, sweetheart." 

"I'm aware, yes," he said, brows lowering. The clouds were back and the sky had lightened again, just enough that she could see his embarrassment, but his eyes were bright and crinkled at the corners. He was happy. She couldn't help but slide her fingers through his hair, bringing his head back down to her shoulder while he made faintly surprised noises in her ear. 

"I love you, too," she said softly, and the muscles of his neck contracted. 

"I don't think I'll ever hear that enough," he mumbled, pressing his scruffy face into her neck. "Are you—was it—all right?" 

She only nodded, still running her fingers through his hair, skimming a thumb over his eyebrow. On the other side of the fire, Dogmeat whined faintly and paced back and forth. 

"More porcupines out there, buddy?" 

He trotted over to snuffle at their cheeks and Cecily swatted his moist snout away. "That better be a no." 

"If there are more porcupines, you'll have to deal with them," said Danse, shutting his eyes and stretching out, settling against her side. "I'm tired." 

"Coward."

"Never, soldier." 

_"Ad victoriam,"_ murmured Cecily. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess I'm writing sappy FO4 fic now!
> 
> Didn't mean to. May be possessed. Pandemic time is strange time.
> 
> :)

**Author's Note:**

> Art for this fic:  
> 
> 
> Curious about how this series fits together? [Here's the timeline.](https://sites.google.com/view/tanaleth/home/fallout/)


End file.
